Week ahead: Covid-19 containment, OPEC in focus

By Alexander Bueso

Date: Saturday 04 Apr 2020

(Sharecast News) - The focus over the coming week will be on the success or not of containment measures across the globe.For both the UK and among the euro area's four largest economies, Barclays Research is penciling in a gradual lifting of the lockdown measures staring from May.

That would still result in a roughly 20% annualised drop in gross domestic product in the second quarter and of nearly a third in April for a 6.0% year-on-year drop in 2020, Barclays estimated.

However, GDP growth is expected to pick up from the third quarter and to grow by 7.6% in 2021. leaving GDP 1% lower by the end of 2021 than had been anticipated before the Covid-19 pandemic.

Against that backdrop, only a few data points referencing the month of March are due out in the UK over the coming week, including consultancy GfK's consumer confidence index on Monday and the RICS house price balance on Thursday.

Financial markets will also be closely attuned to any decisions on output from OPEC+ members at their meeting on Thursday (which had originally been scheduled for Monday).

Stateside meanwhile, the focus will be on Wednesday's Federal Open Market Committee meeting minutes on Wednesday, followed by the latest weekly initial jobless claims figures (Barclays: 4.5m) on Thursday and a preliminary reading for consumer confidence in April on Friday.

Further afield, consumer and factory gate price data are due out in China, on Friday as well.

Also scheduled for throughout the week are interest rate decisions in Israel, Australia, South Korea and Poland.